New York Bankers, Banks & Trusts: The National Park Bank

THE N. P. B.

MAY

15

1900

N. Y.

Dave Thompson scan

The National Park Bank was one of New York's and the nation's largest banks in 1900 at the time of this cancel. 

Banks in New York City as of 1897 showing the National Park Bank as the #2 bank in total assets, ahead of banks like Chemical, Chase, Hanover, and the Bank of New York.

From The New York Times, September 11, 1898:

EDWARD E. POOR AND RICHARD DELAFIELD.

As the active heads of the bank does the largest commercial business in the country, President Edward E. Poor and Vice President Richard Delafield of the National Park Bank are two of the interesting men of the New York financial world, and a word as to their personalities follows appropriately the sketches recently give in these columns as to the personnel of some of our city banks...

The home of the bank has been [the same] building since 1867.  Its charter dates from 1856.  In spite of the great growth of the business, its original capital of $2,000,000 has never been enlarged, the measure of its prosperity being represented by a surplus of $3,700,000.  While the city business of the bank is enormous, its out-of-town connections are world-wide.  The deposit of the bank is $50,000,000.   It is the agent and depository of a long list of banks in Canada, Great Britain, and other countries and to the banks in the Southern States it has long been a sort of "father confessor," extending help to them when needed, and thus playing a prominent part in the movement of the great cotton crop.

It is this wide-reaching sphere of influence that has built the business of the National Park Bank up to where it exceeds that of any other in the country and made it one of the notable institutions of the metropolis.   Locally this sphere is soon to be enlarged.  The Directors of the National Park Bank have acquired an influential interest in the Plaza Bank, at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, and the Plaza will be operated hereafter in harmony with the downtown institution. 

In addition to President Poor and Vice President Delafield, the roster of officers of the National Park Bank includes the names of Stuyvesant  Fish [1], as a Vice President...among the Directors are Joseph T. Moore, George S. Hart, Charles Sternbach, Charles Scribner, Edward C. Hoyt, W. Rockhill Potts, August Belmont [2], Francis R. Appleton, John Jacob Astor [3], George Frederick Vietor, and Herman Oelerichs--a list which, to those who know New York, both proclaims and explains the wide fame and high repute of this institution.

1.  Stuyvesant Fish: Fish was the President of the IC RR and a Vice President of The NPB.

2.  August Belmont, Director The NPB and member of the New York Stock Exchange

3.  John Jacob Astor IV:  Astor, an inheritor of a vast fortune, was one of the most famous and certainly the richest man to die in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.